Households should prepare for tax increases worth hundreds of pounds a year
after the election as the Government struggles to slash borrowing, a leading
think-tank has warned.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies said that the next government might have to
implement more than £12 billion of tax rises or welfare cuts after 2015-16
to ease pressure on Whitehall departments. That would equate to an extra 3p
on the basic rate of income tax.

In analysis after George Osborne’s Budget, the IFS also suggested that the
Treasury had been massaging spending plans to avoid the political
embarrassment of reporting a rise